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The Phallic-Narcissistic Character

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich first read this paper to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in October 1926. It appeared as a portion of a chapter in his magnum opus, Charakteranalyse, in 1933. Although the seeds of his own paranoid and narcissistic decompensation are evident in this brief work, Reich made a major contribution to our diagnostic understanding of psychopathy by specifying the clinical behavior of aggressive narcissism. His etiological formulations, however, should be taken with a large grain of salt. They are suffused with his own prejudice toward homosexuals and women and have been superseded by more thoughtfully composed developmental object relations theory and our selfobject understanding of the narcissistic transference positions. Many of the current DSM-IV criteria for narcissistic personality disorder are also evident in Reich’s clinical descriptors.

The designation of the “phallic-narcissistic character” resulted from the necessity of defining character forms which stand between those of the compulsion neurosis and those of hysteria. They exhibit circumscribed traits which differ sharply, in both the way they originate and the way they become manifest, from those of the other two forms, so that the distinction is justified. The term “phallic-narcissistic character,” sometimes less accurately referred to as “genital-narcissistic character,” has been incorporated into psychoanalytic terminology in the course of the past few years. The description of this type was first presented in a previously unpublished paper read at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in October 1926.

The phallic-narcissistic character differs even in external appearance from the compulsive and the hysterical character. The compulsive is predominantly inhibited, reserved, depressive; the hysteric is nervous, agile, fear ridden, erratic. The typical phallic-narcissistic character, on the other hand, is self-assured, sometimes arrogant, elastic, energetic, often impressive in his bearing. The more neurotic the inner mechanism is, the more obtrusive these modes of behavior are and the more blatantly they are paraded about. In terms of physique, the phallic-narcissistic character is predominantly an athletic type, hardly ever an asthenic type and only in isolated cases a pyknic type (as defined by Kretschmer). His facial features usually exhibit hard and sharp masculine lines. Very often, however, despite his athletic habitus, we find feminine, girlish features (the so-called baby face). Everyday behavior is never cringing, as in the case of the passive-feminine character; it is usually arrogant, either coldly reserved or contemptuously aggressive. And sometimes his behavior is “bristly,” as a representative of this type once put it. The narcissistic element, as opposed to the object-libidinal element, stands out in the attitude toward the object, including the love object, and is always infused with more or less concealed sadistic characteristics.

In everyday life, the phallic-narcissistic character will usually anticipate any impending attack with an attack of his own. The aggression in his character is expressed less in what he does and says than in the way he acts. Particularly, he is felt to be totally aggressive and provocative by those who are not in control of their own aggression. The most pronounced types tend to achieve leading positions in life and are ill suited to subordinate positions among the rank and file. When such is the case, as in the army or similar hierarchal organizations, they compensate for the necessity of having to subordinate themselves by dominating those beneath them. If their vanity is offended, they react with cold disdain, marked ill-humor, or downright aggression. Their narcissism, as opposed to that of other character types, is expressed not in an infantile but in a blatantly self-confident way, with a flagrant display of superiority and dignity, in spite of the fact that the basis of their nature is no less infantile than that of the other types. A comparison of their structure with the structure, for example, of a compulsive character, yields the clearest insights into the difference between pregenital and phallic-based narcissism. Notwithstanding their overwhelming concern for themselves, they sometimes form strong relationships to people and things of the world.* In this respect, they show a close resemblance to the genital character. They differ from the latter, however, in that their actions show a far deeper and broader tendency to be influenced by irrational motives. This type is encountered most frequently among athletes, pilots, military men, and engineers. Aggressive courage is one of the most outstanding traits of their character, just as temporizing caution characterizes the compulsive character and the avoidance of dangerous situations characterizes the passive-feminine character. This courage and pugnacity of the phallic-narcissistic character have, as opposed to the genital character, a compensatory function and also serve to ward off contrary impulses. This is of no special importance as far as their respective achievements are concerned.

The absence of reaction formations against his openly aggressive and sadistic behavior distinguishes the phallic-narcissistic character from the compulsive character. We shall have to demonstrate that this aggressive behavior itself fulfills a function of defense. Because of the free aggression in the relatively unneurotic representatives of this type, social activities are strong, impulsive, energetic, to the point, and usually productive. The more neurotic the character is, the more extravagant and one sided the activities appear—although they are not necessarily that extravagant and one-sided in actual fact. Between these actions and the creation of paranoic systems lie the many variations of this character type. The behavior of the phallic-narcissistic character differs from that of the compulsive character in its demonstration of greater boldness and less thoroughness with respect to details.

In phallic-narcissistic men, erective potency, as opposed to orgastic potency, is very well developed. Relationships with women are disturbed by the typical derogatory attitude toward the female sex. Nonetheless, the representatives of this character type are looked upon as eminently desirable sexual objects because they reveal all the marks of obvious masculinity in their appearance. Though not a rarity, the phallic-narcissistic character among women is far less frequently found. The neurotic forms are characterized by active homosexuality and clitoral excitability.* The genitally healthier forms are characterized by enormous self-confidence that is based on physical vigor or beauty.

Almost all forms of active male and female homosexuality, most cases of so-called moral insanity, paranoia, and the related forms of schizophrenia, and, moreover, many cases of erythrophobia and manifestly sadistic male perverts, belong to the phallic-narcissistic character type. Productive women very often fall under this category.**

Now let us turn our attention to the structure and genesis of this character. First of all, we have to distinguish those impulses which attain direct gratification in the phallic-narcissistic behavior from those which form the narcissistic defense apparatus, though the two are intertwined. One typical feature brought out through analysis is an identification between the ego as a whole and the phallus; in the case of phallic-narcissistic women, there is a very strong fantasy of having a penis. This ego, moreover, is openly vaunted. In erythrophobia, this impulse is repressed and breaks through in the form of an intensely neurotic feeling of shame and blushing. At the basis of and common to these cases is a fixation on that phase of childhood development in which the anal-sadistic position has just been left, while the genital object-libidinal position has not been fully attained, and is, therefore, governed by the proud, self-confident concentration on one’s own penis. This explanation does not tell the whole story. The phallic-narcissistic character is characterized not only by this phallic pride but more so by the motives which compel him to become arrested at this stage of development.

Along with pride in the real or, as the case may be, fantasized phallus, there is a strong phallic aggression. Unconsciously, the penis, in the case of the male of this type, serves less as an instrument of love than as an instrument of aggression, wreaking revenge upon the woman. This accounts for the strong erective-potency characteristic of this type, but also for the relative incapacity for orgastic experience. In the childhood histories of the phallic-narcissistic character, the most severe disappointments in love are found with surprising regularity, disappointments precisely in the heterosexual objects, i.e., in the mother in the case of boys and in the father in the case of girls. And, in fact, these disappointments are experienced at the height of the striving to win the object by phallic exhibition. In the case of the male representatives of this type, the mother is very often the stricter parent, or the father died at an early age or was not married to the mother and was never present.

The inhibition of the further development to genital object-love in childhood because of a severe frustration of genital and exhibitionistic activities at the height of their development, typically by that parent or guardian on whom the genital interests had begun to focus, results in an identification with the genitally desired parent or guardian on a genital level. Boys, for example, relinquish and introject the female object and shift their interests to the father (active homosexuality, because phallic). The mother is retained as a desired object but only with narcissistic attitudes and sadistic impulses of revenge. Again and again such men seek unconsciously to prove to women how potent they are. At the same time, however, the sexual act constitutes a piercing or destroying—closer to the surface, a degrading—of the woman. In phallic-narcissistic women, genital revenge upon the man (castration) during the sexual act and the attempt to make him or have him appear impotent becomes, in an analogous way, the leading tendency. This is certainly not at variance with the sexual attraction exercised by these strongly erotic characters on the opposite sex. Hence, we often meet with a neurotic-polygamous inability to stick to one’s partner, the active inducing of disappointments, and passive flight from the possibility of being deserted. In other cases, where narcissistic sensitivity disturbs the mechanism of compensation, we find a weak potency, which the individual will not admit. The more disturbed the potency is, the more unstable the general mood usually is. In such cases, there are sudden vacillations from moods of manly self-confidence to moods of deep depression. Capacity for work is likewise severely disturbed.

The phallic-exhibitionistic and sadistic attitude serves simultaneously as a defense against diametrically opposite tendencies. The compulsive character, following genital frustration, regresses to the earlier stage of anality and develops reaction formations here. The phallic-narcissistic character remains at the phallic stage—indeed, he exaggerates its manifestations; but he does this with the intent of protecting himself against a regression to the passive and anal stages. In the course of the analysis of such characters, we meet with more and more intense and concentrated, while at the same time rigidly warded off, anal and passive tendencies. However, these tendencies do not directly constitute the character. Rather, it is mainly determined by the defense against these tendencies in the form of phallic sadism and exhibitionism, a defense proceeding from an ego that has become phallic-narcissistic. There is a marked difference here between the passive-feminine and the phallic-narcissistic character. Whereas the former wards off his aggression and his genital impulses with the help of anal and passive surrender, the latter wards off his anal and passive-homosexual tendencies with the help of phallic aggression. We often hear analysts describe such characters as anal and passive homosexual. However, just as the passive-feminine character cannot be designated as phallic-sadistic because he wards off these impulses, the phallic-narcissistic character cannot be described as anal-passive because he successfully subdues these impulses in himself. The character is determined not by what it wards off but by the way in which it does it and by the instinctual forces which the ego uses for this purpose.

In cases of moral insanity, active homosexuality, and phallic sadism, as well as in sublimated forms of these types, e.g., professional athletes, this defense succeeds well; the warded-off tendencies of passive and anal homosexuality are merely expressed in certain exaggerations. In cases of paranoia, on the other hand, the warded-off tendencies break through in the form of delusions. Erythrophobia is closely related to the paranoic form of this character; the representation of pathological blushing is often found in the anamnesis of paranoid schizophrenia. A patient suffering from erythrophobia falls victim to a symptomatic breakthrough of the warded-off passive and anal homosexuality inasmuch as he gives up masturbation because of acute castration anxiety. The sexual stasis which builds up weakens the defense function of the ego and affects vasomotor activity.* Active homosexuality, phallic sadism, and moral insanity, on the other hand, have a strong ego defense, provided there is effective libido gratification. If, for one reason or another, this gratification is interrupted for any length of time, the passive and anal tendency also breaks through in these cases, either symptomatically or openly.

Among the phallic-narcissistic-sadistic characters, one often finds addicts, especially alcoholics. Not only warded-off homosexuality lies at the root of these addictions, but also another specific trait of this character type, likewise the result of phallic frustration. Let us take the case of the male. Along with the mother’s frustration of phallic exhibition and masturbation, there is an identification with her. This has a provocative effect upon the recently relinquished anal position and, consequently, upon the passive-feminine behavior. This is immediately offset by an accentuation of the phallic-exhibitionistic and aggressive, i.e., masculine, impulses. However, when the identification with the woman takes place at the phallic stage, the woman is fantasized as having a penis and one’s own penis become associated with the breast. We therefore find a tendency toward passive and active fellatio in the sexually active forms of this character type, in addition to a maternal attitude toward younger men in the case of the male, and to younger and feminine women in the case of the female. In alcoholism, there is also a regression to the oral position. Accordingly, the typical traits of the phallic-narcissistic character are effaced in the alcoholic.

In the phallic-narcissistic character, the transitions between the healthy, object-libidinal form on the one hand and the acutely pathological, pregenital forms of addiction and chronic depression on the other hand are far more numerous and diverse than they are in other character types. In psychopathology, much is said about the affinity between the genius and the criminal. However, the type they have in mind is a product neither of the compulsive nor of the hysterical nor of the masochistic character; he derives predominantly from the phallic-narcissistic character. Most of the sex murderers of recent years belong to this character type, e.g., Haarmann and Kürten. Because of severe childhood disappointments in love, these men later exercised phallic-sadistic revenge on the sexual object. Landru as well as Napoleon and Mussolini belong to the phallic-narcissistic character type. The combination of phallic narcissism and phallic sadism accompanied by compensation of passive- and anal-homosexual impulses produces those psychic constitutions most strongly charged with energy. Whether such a type will turn his energy to active endeavors or crime on a large scale depends, first and foremost, upon the possibilities which the social climate and situation provide for this character to employ his energies in a sublimated form.

Next in importance is the extent of genital gratification. It determines the amount of surplus energy which the destructive impulses receive and, therefore, how urgent the need for revenge becomes and what pathogenic forms it assumes. In contrasting the social and libido-economic conditions, we do not want to obscure the fact that the inhibition of gratification is also dependent upon socio-familial factors. In terms of their constitutions, these character forms probably produce an above-average amount of libidinal energy, thus making it possible for the aggression to become that much more intense.

The analytic treatment of phallic-narcissistic characters is one of the most gratifying tasks. Since, in these patients, the phallic stage has been fully achieved and the aggression is relatively free, it is easier to establish genital and social potency, once the initial difficulties have been mastered, than it is in patients of other character forms. The analysis is always promising if the analyst succeeds in unmasking the phallic-narcissistic attitudes as the warding off of passive-feminine impulses and in eliminating the unconscious attitude of revenge toward the opposite sex. If this fails, the patients remain narcissistically inaccessible. Their character resistance consists in aggressive deprecation of the treatment and of the analyst in a more or less disguised form, in narcissistic usurpation of the interpretation work, in the rejection and warding off of every anxious and passive impulse and, above all, of the positive transference. The reactivation of phallic anxiety succeeds only through the energetic and consistent unmasking of the reactive narcissistic mechanism. The indications of passivity and anal-homosexual tendencies should not be immediately pursued in depth; otherwise the narcissistic defense will usually build up to a point of complete inaccessibility.

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*Editor’s Note: The distinction between attachments to animate and inanimate objects (e.g., loved ones vs. weapons) can be an important clinical marker for degree of psychopathy in the “phallic-narcissist.”

*Editor’s Note: Reich did not have the benefit of Masters and Johnson’s scientific investigation of the female orgasm.

**Editor’s Note: Reich shows a bit of his own phallic-narcissism in this arrogant and inaccurate condemnation through psychopathological labeling and lumping.

*Editor’s Note: Reich’s theory of erythrophobia makes no sense. Blushing is best understood as a peripheral autonomic hyperreactivity to the feeling of shame.